Delivering Food by Drone
A Singapore restaurant plans to use drones (遥控飞机) to transport food and drinks from the kitchen to a wait station near customers' tables.
Infinium Robotics, the Singapore company that's developing the drones for restaurant chain Timbre, has spent the past two weeks testing the technology at the restaurant before it opens each night
business and hopes to have it in place by the end of the year.
But how does the drone know where to hover (盘旋)? What if someone bumps into the drone or is standing in its way? "There's no chance at all it will hit anything," says Infinium Robotics chief executive Junyang Woon.
The drones automatically charge while (wait) in the kitchen. the chef puts an order on the drone, he hits a button on a keypad and the drone automatically flies to one of two wait stations. Sense-and-avoid technology (build) into the drone won't allow it to land at the wait station if anything is in its way. The drones are equipped with sonar (声呐系统) and an infrared sensor (红外线传感器), too.
A waiter then removes the food or drink from the drone and hits a button sends it back to the kitchen. The drones, weighing a little over five pounds, carry just over four pounds of food. Infinium Robotics is working on a model that will carry twice as much food.
"Its job is (help) the waiters to reduce some of their boring tasks, " Woon said. "If they let the robots (do) the job, they can concentrate on interacting with customers to bring about higher customer satisfaction and dining experience. "
Since it drew recent media attention, Woon (hear) from resorts and restaurants in 10 countries, including the United States.
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A. accidentally B. applying C. connections D. defined E. examples F. explaining G. reflect H. thoughtfully I. trends J. various K. called |
A mathematics teacher asks her students to design a floor plan for a community center, including dance areas and a place for a band. Why? Because such a design will involve several geometric (几何的) shapes and a/an area, and the students must use what they have studied about the computation of area to make an effective plan.
A history teacher asks his students to on and write about their experiences holding jobs and their relationships with their employers. Why? Because the students will soon be studying the Industrial Revolution, focusing on how it shaped the experiences of and relationships among members of social classes in the United States.
A science teacher asks her students to prepare statements their position on whether the president should sign an international environmental treaty. Why? Because preparing these statements will engage the students in assessing and a number of scientific views on global warming.
Anyone alert to current in teaching practice will not be surprised by these examples. They illustrate the practice on the part of many teachers to engage students more in the subject matter they are learning by helping students to draw between their lives and the subject matter, between principles and practice, past and present, and present and future.
Yet there is also something unusual about these : not what appears on the surface but what lies behind it. These three learning activities were developed with the help of a simple set of guidelines the Teaching for Understanding Framework.
For many parents, raising a teenager is like fighting a long war, but years go by without any clear winner. Like a border conflict between1countries, the parent-teen war is about boundaries: Where is the line between what I 2and what you do?
Both sides want peace, but neither feels it has any power to stop the conflict. 3, this is because neither is willing to admit any responsibility for4 it. From the parents' point of view, the only cause of their fight is their children's complete 5. And of course, the teens see it in exactly the same way, except 6. Both feel trapped.
In this article, I'll describe three no-win 7 that commonly arise between teens and parents and then suggest some ways out of the 8. The first is quarrels over9 things. Examples include the color of the teen's hair, the cleanliness of the bedroom, the preferred style of clothing, the child's 10 to eat a good breakfast before school, or his tendency to sleep until noon on the weekends. Second, blaming. The goal of a blaming battle is to make the other admit that his bad attitude is the reason why everything goes wrong. Third, needing to be right. It doesn't matter what the 11 is — politics, the laws of physics, or the proper way to break an egg — the12 of these arguments is to prove that you are right and the other person is wrong, for both wish to be considered a/an13 — someone who actually knows something — and therefore to command14. Unfortunately, as long as parents and teens continue to assume that they15 more than the other, they'll continue to fight these battles forever and never make any real progress.
At first glance Esther Okade seems like a normal 10-year-old. She loves dressing up as Elsa from "Frozen", playing with Barbie dolls and going to the park or shopping. But what makes the British-Nigerian youngster stand out is the fact that she's also a university student.
Esther, from Walsall, an industrial town in the UK's West Midlands region, is one of the country's youngest college freshmen. The talented 10-year-old enrolled at the Open University in January and is already top of the class, having recently scored 100% in an exam.
"It's so interesting and super easy," she laughs. "My mum taught me in a nice way." She adds: "I want to finish the course in two years. Then I'm going to do my PhD in financial maths when I'm 13. I want to have my own bank by the time I'm 15 because I like numbers and I like people and banking is a great way to help people. "
And in case people think her parents have pushed her into starting university early, Esther disagrees. "I actually wanted to start when I was seven. But my mum didn't agree." After three years of begging, Mother Efe finally agreed to explore the idea.
Esther has always jumped ahead of her peers. Her mother noticed her daughter's gift for figures shortly after she began homeschooling her at the age of three. Initially, Esther's parents had enrolled her in a private school but after a few short weeks, the usually-energetic youngster refused to go back to that school because the teachers didn't let her talk in class. In the UK, education is not compulsory until five, so Efe started to do little things at home by teaching basic number skills but Esther was miles ahead. By four, her natural talent for maths had seen the eager student move on to algebra (代数学) and quadratic equations (二次方程式).
And Esther isn't the only maths miracle in the family. Her younger brother Isaiah, 6, will soon be sitting his first A-level exam in June.
Toys for Tickets Now Underway
Boston drivers are reminded that the City's popular "Toys for Tickets" campaign is currently underway. All non-public safety parking tickets issued on Boston's streets on December 1, 2 and 3, 2010, may be resolved by providing a toy of equal or greater value than the fine on the ticket.
Toys are being accepted this week through Friday, December 17, between the hours of 9 AM and 4 PM, on the second floor of Boston City Hall as well as at the Transportation Department's Enforcement Building at 200 Frontage Road. Parking is available at the 200 Frontage Road facility. To participate in the "Toys for Tickets" program, drivers must bring the parking ticket as well as a new, non-violent, unwrapped toy of an equal or greater value than the fine. A receipt must be provided for the toy.
The "Toys for Tickets" program began in Boston 16 years ago. Last year, the campaign resulted in over $3,000 in toys being donated to local families who would not otherwise have been able to provide presents to their children on Christmas.
Boston Named #1 Digital City
Mayor Thomas M. Menino announced today that the City of Boston has been ranked #1 among the most advanced digital cities in America according to the Center for Digital Government's 10th Annual Digital Cities Survey. The survey recognizes municipalities that successfully use technology to better serve constituents and conduct government operations.
In September 2010, the City of Boston website was named the #1 city government website in America in the Center for Digital Government's Best of the Web Competition. Boston is the first city to win both awards in the same year.
"I am proud of the way that we are using technology to make government more accessible to Boston's residents, businesses and visitors," said Mayor Menino. "This recognition is an honor for the Department of Innovation and Technology and the entire City of Boston."
Camera flashes cut across the softly lighted downtown Los Angeles restaurant, as the crowd at Ludo Bites jostles (推挤) for the photo – of the Columbian River king salmon duck. "This is the game we all now play," chef and owner Ludo Lefebvre said. "We cook, we smile – and the people, they don't eat. They get their cameras. "
Not so long ago, diners, hungry for special meals, would pull out a point-and-shoot at a restaurant for a quick picture of sliced birthday cake.
No more. Taking a cue from Twitter and Facebook cultures, serious foodies (美食家) and casual consumers alike are using digital technology to document each bite, then sharing the pictures online.
Flickr, the photo-sharing website, has seen the number of pictures tagged as "food" jump from about half a million in 2008 to more than 6 million today, according to company officials. In the group "I Ate This" on Flickr's site, nearly 20, 000 people have uploaded more than 307,000 images of their latest meals.
Camera manufacturers are joining the trend, selling cameras that offer "food" settings, which adjust to enhance colors and textures (质地) on close-ups.
"I am sharing my experiences with my friends," said Hong Pham, 33, a Los Angeles radiologist who runs the food blog Ravenous Couple. "Why shouldn't I share what inspires me?"
But what is documentary fun for people such as Pham is souring the gastronomic (美食的) set.
Managers regularly face diners demanding to be moved away from camera flashes and sounds. Waiters find themselves tongue-tied as customers take out voice recorders to capture a recitation of each course. Some chefs have had enough.
Chef Grant Achatz allows only no-flash photography in his restaurant. He, like many other chefs, finds himself torn between being flattered by the public's enthusiasm and annoyed with the effect the picture-taking is having on the restaurant's operation.
Some consumers now believe food should be consumed visually as well as physically. "What happened to the enjoyment of just eating the food?" said Andrew Knowlton, the restaurant editor for Bon Appetite magazine. "People are losing sight of why you go out."
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A. Finally, it has taken a giant leap forward. B. All of the factors pushing online education toward the mainstream of higher education are now crashing together. C. Over the past few years, he has been teaching himself programming. D. In other words, Coursera's approach is a long way from a simple online video lecture. E. Yet the most exciting promise of their company and the like is the role they might play in improving education for the poor around the world. F. Ng's course in machine learning attracted 104,000 enrollees (入学者) around the world. |
A School That Can Educate Us All
Christos Porios, 16, lives in a small Greek city. "My mother's a teacher and my father's a mechanic," he explains, adding that neither is knowledgeable about computers — especially compared with him.
Porios was taking a free class in machine learning offered by Andrew Ng, a professor at Stanford University, over an online platform Ng developed with his colleagues. Drawing on what he learned, Porios was able to participate in the International Space Apps Challenge, a virtual hackathon (编程马拉松) using data from NASA and other government agencies.
If one teenager in one small city can become a genius hacker through an online course, does it mean the world has changed? We have been hearing about the potential of online education for decades.
A number of online education platforms have appeared, featuring professors from top universities offering free courses.
Ng was amazed. "It would take me 250 years to teach this many people at Stanford," he says. And so, just one month into the course, Ng and his Stanford colleague, Daphne Koller, decided to leave their faculty posts (教职) and dive into online teaching full-time. In April, they launched their company, Coursera, with a $16 million round of venture funding. So far, it has managed to team up with 35 colleges in nine countries.
To Ng and Koller, Coursera's mission is simple and yet grand. That is to teach millions of people around the world for free, while also transforming higher education.
According to Ng, the world's top 20 universities enroll only about 200,000 students. There are million more who could participate in classwork at the higher level, but most of them are far from any of the leading universities.
Koller says Coursera's total registration has hit 15 million. Porios, the young Greek, is only one of those registrants. His hope is to study in Germany or England someday. He is even toying with the idea of taking classes at MIT or Stanford — but this time in person.
